


The Itch

by aperture_living



Category: BioShock, BioShock Infinite
Genre: Drama, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 15:31:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aperture_living/pseuds/aperture_living
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There had been something growing, a knowledge like a festering wound that required attention and wouldn’t stop its incessant itching. It opened and bled the second they were all in the same room together, their awkward, hateful glances like swords that split her innocence open and flayed it alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Itch

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers. Lots and lots and lots of Spoilers.

There had been something growing, a knowledge like a festering wound that required attention and wouldn’t stop its incessant itching. It opened and bled the second they were all in the same room together, their awkward, hateful glances like swords that split her innocence open and flayed it alive.

Elizabeth hadn’t known then what it was, had known only veiled comments and insinuated hints, but she had known it was _something_. Booker’s rage, Comstock’s passive admittance, the look in their eyes at one another, two different sides of the same coin, flipped and flipped and flipped again. She had asked questions, but she hadn’t expected straight answers. There hadn’t been time, not really, not as she had hoped, and so it would be something to examine later.

In Paris. Under the lights. In the iron embrace of the Eiffel tower. In effortless dreams.

But when she became myself, when I fully _understood_ , when everything was released and I knew, the itch subsided and the pain filled it in. The infection spread and I simply wanted to close the door, wanted to build that tower back up, wanted to have this moment of taking a step back and closing my eyes and forgetting everything.

Does a man’s current actions erase the crimes he committed in the past? Can a newfound loyalty replace a betrayal of the highest order? Can I — _we_ — forgive the wrongs of a man lost in a bottle of whiskey and horse races, in the blood of a massacre long past and the sins he can never shake?

I looked at him with new eyes. Felt things with a new heart. My back still ached from the tricks they performed on me in the lab, but it wouldn’t be as agonizing as this truth, wouldn’t leave like the pain in my chest. Why did we tear the siphons down? Why did we have to do that? Why did she make me into this _thing_ that can walk all worlds, can know all things, all paths? A person isn’t supposed to have this much knowledge; the human brain isn’t designed for it. Does that make me less than human? More than?

But it was foolish, because we—no, she— had to know. He could have walked away, he could have, and maybe if he had tried harder, she would have followed, a willful lamb to his expert shepherding. Maybe. And maybe I wouldn’t be watching him — younger and harder and rougher— hand the baby, handing _us_ , over to Robert. Maybe I wouldn’t be watching a pinkie fall into the mud and dirt of a back alley, the key, the link, the allowance and the tax.

She was the prayer for peace; I was the answer. What we are together, I don’t know. The end, I suppose. She regrets knowing.

So do I.

Now we’re standing in the water, and he looks at me with different eyes, and he knows I’m not her. Not completely. It scares him more than the time he admitted it, but he won’t say anything, won’t because I think there’s a sliver that wants to go back, wants to forget, wants to stop remembering any of this. But there are lighthouses that need illumination, and he’s a man that needs to walk this path.

This is his new baptism, and I am the father. I am the God who needs to accept him, who he needs acceptance from.

They could have turned back, but they gave it up. And now I hurt, and she wishes she never knew and I… I can’t forget. I can’t forget the way his fabric soaks under this simple water, unblessed, cursed, sullied with his dying breaths. I can’t forget the way his eyes stare helpless and apologetically up at me, can’t forget the memories I have from her, can’t forget how many times she tossed him salts and bullets, how many times she saved his life so I could take it later. The necessary evil.

I can’t forget how still the air is when all of _meus **them**_ disappear, one by one, the lines cut off and only I remain, a memory etched into my fingers, into my heart.


End file.
